English translation of the prose
AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.
Japan Romanticism Poetry Circle — Autumn, September
September 16, 2023
Record and commentary: 河内裕二, Japan Romanticism Academia
This year marks one hundred years since the Great Kantō Earthquake. September 1, the day it struck, is now designated Disaster Prevention Day. Other large earthquakes named “Great Earthquake Disasters” include the Great Hanshin-Awaji and Great East Japan earthquakes. Their respective totals of about 6,500 and 18,000 dead or missing compare with approximately 105,000 in the Kantō disaster—an astonishing scale of human loss. Moreover, rumors and false reports spread immediately afterward, and people of Korean origin were massacred in various places. There was even an incident in which a group of traveling peddlers from another region were suspected of being Korean and killed by villagers who could not understand their dialect. The film Fukudamura Incident, based on this event, opened on September 1. It was also during the confusion immediately after the earthquake that the anarchist Sakae Ōsugi was murdered by military police. A hundred years later, with fake news spreading through the internet and social media, I can hardly regard the Great Kantō Earthquake as something belonging to a distant past.
The meeting was held at the Miura Workers' Civic Center from 11 a.m. on September 16. Those attending were the five members 加藤由良子, 嘉山光枝, 清水和子, and 羽床員子 of the Miura Tanka Society, and President Seishu Hamano of Japan Romanticism Academia, together with 河内裕二. The Miura Tanka Society's president, 三宅尚道, and 嶋田弘子 also sent poems.
女子アナの高校野球歓声の
球もろともに青空に消ゆ 由良子
The author is 加藤由良子. While driving, she heard a high-school baseball broadcast on the radio and was surprised both that the announcer was a woman and that the commentary was so skillful. Reading the latter part, we almost hear that refreshing voice: an energetic description of a ball hit high into the air. The summer scene at Kōshien rises vividly before us. With COVID restrictions lifted this year, the supporters in the stands must also have cheered enthusiastically, and surely that excitement came through the radio. Incidentally, a woman providing high-school baseball commentary is unusual but not unprecedented. I remember it becoming news a few years ago when a female announcer was assigned to the hundredth tournament.
油蝉ミンミン蝉と法師蝉
暑い日中の三部合唱 光枝
The author is 嘉山光枝. Three kinds of cicada appear in the opening part. Different cicadas begin calling at different times. Here they are arranged from earliest to latest, but the order is also probably the best in terms of verbal rhythm. Indeed, kumazemi and higurashi begin before aburazemi, but both names have four sound units; starting with either would not produce the good rhythm achieved by beginning with aburazemi. Readers who know cicadas notice the order in which they begin to sing. Following that sequence, they are surprised at the end by a “three-part chorus.” This revives the memory of how exceptional this summer was: the heat began unbelievably early and continued for a long time. Even the cicadas lost their usual rhythm. The abnormality appears in the fact that a three-part chorus, ordinarily beautiful, can hardly be imagined as a lovely melody when performed by cicadas. Would it not become a dreadful dissonance? Every phrase shows excellent word choice.
友達のやさしいことばに囲まれて
プレー見ている木陰のベンチ 和子
A poem by 清水和子. When she was admitted to the clinic at the residential home where she lives, she could see a park from her room. Once she slipped out secretly to visit it, and the other residents there welcomed her. It was hot, so they seated her on a bench in the shade and spoke kindly to her. She had to return soon and was there only briefly, but she could not forget her happiness at that moment and made it into this poem. It has a calm, warm atmosphere; hearing that this was an outing while recovering from illness gives it still greater depth. It is enjoyable to imagine what game is meant by “play.” I first thought of tennis, but its somewhat vigorous impression did not quite fit. She was watching ground golf, she said.
高校の野球の試合は延長戦
タイ・ブレークのバントで決まる 尚道
The author is 三宅尚道. In a tie-break, play begins with runners on first and second base. It is used in extra innings when the game has not been decided after nine. The aim is to reach a result quickly and shorten the game as much as possible, reducing the burden on players. One extra-innings game I remember is the 2006 final of the eighty-eighth tournament, in which Masahiro Tanaka of Komazawa Tomakomai and Yūki Saitō of Waseda Jitsugyō pitched against one another. Still undecided after fifteen innings, the game was replayed the next day for another nine. Even as a spectator, one worried about the pitchers' shoulders and elbows. The tie-break system was introduced at Kōshien in 2018. Initially, extra innings continued normally through the twelfth, with the tie-break starting in the thirteenth if necessary. This year, apparently, it was brought forward to the tenth, as soon as extra innings begin. In an extra-innings tie-break, with no room left for error, the first batter will normally bunt rather than swing away. If the bunt succeeds, the chance of victory becomes much greater.
The poem coolly states the “essence” of the game after the change to an immediate extra-innings tie-break: in high-school baseball, where defeat means elimination, the key to winning is the bunt. Players who have fought evenly with all their strength for nine innings then seek victory not by boldly challenging and hitting their way through, but by carefully, reliably bunting to avoid mistakes. The author also seems to ask whether this is right. Choosing security and safety instead of taking a challenge is surely not confined to baseball's extra innings.
悲しみを昇華し闇にも光りあて
魂揺さぶるみすゞの詩集 員子
A work by 羽床員子. This poem is one interpretation of Kaneko Misuzu as a person. Knowing that she died by suicide at the young age of twenty-six, we can imagine deep sorrow and darkness within her, but we do not know how things actually were. Each reader builds an image of Misuzu from her poems. From well-known works such as Tairyō and Watashi to Kotori to Suzu to, I feel gentleness and calm in her poetry and sympathize with it. The poem's use of words about shaking the soul, which contain something intense, is therefore interesting. It also seems to emphasize not quiet “digestion” of sorrow but vigorous “sublimation” that raises it into poetry.
熱帯の蚊を貰ひしか極寒の
汗だく寝返り兵士のまぼろし 成秋
The author is President Seishu Hamano. He made an actual experience into a poem. According to his account, malaria-carrying mosquitoes seem recently to be present in Japan too; after being bitten, he suffered fever and chills, the symptoms of malaria. It is a great relief that he recovered safely. He recognized that it might be malaria because he had read accounts by people who contracted it during the war, and his symptoms were exactly those described.
The opening phrase about a tropical mosquito immediately suggests malaria; the word “soldier” makes us expect a Japanese soldier in the wartime southern theater. Then “apparition” reveals that the subject is the author himself, taking us by surprise. A soldier would have died. The misery of the wartime battlefield and the joy of living in the present are expressed implicitly.
藤村の椰子の実ひとつ見つけたり
父の残した荷物の中より 弘子
A work by 嶋田弘子. Sorting her late father's belongings, she found a coconut, which brought Shimazaki Tōson's Yashi no Mi to mind. That poem about a coconut drifting far from its homeland is said to have been sung often among soldiers in the south, and she thought her father must surely have sung it with his comrades. She said that when she accompanied him on a return visit to Bougainville, she saw coconut palms all over the island, so presumably his coconut came from there. The single expression “Tōson's” incorporates his poem into her own, borrowing its worldview and message to strengthen and color the content. Those few words make the poem eloquent.
武蔵野の台地に集ふ旅人は
故郷おもひて夜空見上げる 裕二
My own work. The Musashino Plateau extends from Tokyo's Tama district northward to around Kawagoe in Saitama. I now live in Fuchū in the Tama area. The Kōshū Highway, one of the five highways developed by the Edo shogunate, passes through the city. Fuchū once had the provincial government and general shrine of Musashi, so many travelers must have come and gone through its streets. Imagining this, I composed by superimposing people like myself and my friends, who came from other regions and live in Fuchū today, on those of the past. In conversation, a friend told me that the stars were beautiful in his hometown. I too sometimes look up at the night sky. Perhaps travelers of old and today's “travelers” from the provinces alike naturally look up when they think of home. Though, as in Chieko's Adokenai Hanashi, there may be no true sky in Tokyo.
Two poems at this meeting include the names of other works: “Misuzu's poetry collection” and “Tōson's coconut.” The former is not specific, but many people share a certain understanding of Kaneko Misuzu's poetry, so to some extent it achieves the same effect as naming a work.
The incorporation of, or relation to, other works in literature is called intertextuality. An easy example in tanka is honkadori, allusive variation on an earlier poem. Even without going that far, these two works practice intertextuality. It is an effective way to express much within tanka's mere thirty-one units, borrowing the “power” of another work. Conversely, one must express originality within those thirty-one units—and fewer still after mentioning the other work. Unless handled well, the poem becomes colored entirely by the work it has incorporated. Both poems this time succeed.
Original wording, author credits, notes and source materials are preserved there.